Homework Is Useless for Children
March 28th, 2012We’re going to take Owen on his first outing with other local homeschooling families to visit a geothermal power plant. It would be an understatement to say that he is going to enjoy this very much.
Via: The Daily Telegraph:
CHILDREN are being lumbered with hours of homework every week – but the extra slog doesn’t do them any good.
Research reveals primary school homework offers no real benefit – and only limited results in junior high school.
Only senior students in Years 11 and 12 benefit from after-school work, associate professor Richard Walker said.
“What the research shows is that, in countries where they spend more time on homework, the achievement results are lower,” Dr Walker, from Sydney University’s Education Faculty, said.
“The amount of homework is a really critical issue for kids. If they are overloaded they are not going to be happy and not going to enjoy it. There are other things kids want to do that are very valuable things for them to be doing.
“I don’t think anyone except senior high school students should be doing a couple of hours of homework.
I *HATED* homework way back when, especially since I typically grok’d the material in the first few minutes in typical auto-didactic fashion.
Such busy work was nothing BUT a slog. A painful, angry and resentful process that demonstrated the truth of the “education” system early on.
Today, I read for hours and hours on subjects of interest with the slightest provocation — and no pressure whatsoever placed on me to do so.
In other words, learning is, was and always will be a self-motivated process. A teacher does not “teach”. A teacher counsels, cajoles, comments and ultimately guides a willing mind into and through subject matter.
Anything else is not teaching.